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The Excavation of the Cypro-Mycenaean Wreck

All archaeological excavation calls for the collaboration of a number of disciplines and this is especially true of underwater excavation. Archaeologists, topographers, architects, mechanics, geologists, geophysicists and other specialists work hand in hand with technicians, divers, photographers, draughtsmen, conservators and sailors at the exacting tasks of excavation, planning, conservation, documentation, study and finally the presentation of the underwater finds.The Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology assembled a large and able team which successfully completed the excavation of the Cypro-Mycenaean wreck at Point Iria and at the same time instilled knowledge and experience into numbers of young archaeologists and students who took part in the project.

The Preparations

The first reconnaissance after the chance discovery of the site by Nikos Tsouchlos (who is now the Director of HIMA) in 1962 was carried out in 1974 in order to photograph and film the area. In 1989 HIMA decided to carry out a regular excavation. The following year a brief exploratory mission was organised and the team relocated and photographed the site and mapped its exact position. They found, however, that the large intact pithos that had attracted Tsouchlos’s attention in 1962 had disappeared. The main concentration of wreck lay on a rocky bottom with small sandy patches 15 m from the shore and some 100 metres north of the tip of Point Iria, at a depth ranging from 12 to 25 m. In the autumn of 1991 the Institute organised a surface survey of the seabed at the site of the wreck, in the course of which the main body of the ship’s cargo was plotted and all surface finds were raised.

The pottery brought up revealed the age and importance of the wreck. Yannos Lolos, the pottery expert, identified the three pithoi and a tall jug as being Cypriot in origin. Another vase that was recovered proved to be a typical Mycenaean stirrup jar. The pottery all dates to around 1200 BC. The excavators realised that it was a wreck belonging to the Late Bronze Age, only the third to have been found in the Eastern Mediterranean, after those at Cape Gelidonya and Ulu Burun in Turkey. In the Spring of 1992 the team returned to mount a full excavation of the site, which continued for the next two years. A base was set up on land to house the personnel and the machinery. The diving boat Siomos and a floating raft were moored over the site of the wreck as a base for the divers.

The Excavation (1993-1994)

An area of more than 5000 m² was excavated in and around the main concentration of pottery from the ship’s cargo. All the finds were photographed in situ and their positions plotted. Apart from the wreck cargo, many earlier and later pottery fragments were found in the area, either jettisoned by passing ships or belonging to other wrecks. The excavation of the central area, covering some 120 m², began with trial trenches, which were afterwards extended to include the whole of the marked off zone. All the finds from the wreck were either whole pots or large fragments. They were found half- or fully buried in the sandy patches among the rocks and the concretions formed by the action of the sea over the centuries. These consisted of sand, stones and marine flora and fauna and contained sherds and whole pots.
All the finds, after a preliminary treatment, were catalogued, drawn and photographed at the base camp and then immersed in tanks of water, which was the first step in their desalination. At the end of each season they were shipped to the Spetses Museum for cleaning and restoration in the Spetses Museum conservation laboratory. From 1991 to 1997 all the finds from the wreck were treated and restored by a team of experienced conservators, and samples of the clay from the pots were given for archaeometric analysis. Over one hundred archaeologists, technicians and other personnel took part in every phase of the operation, from the excavation at the site to the restoration and preparation of the finds for their final display in the exhibition in the Spetses Museum.

Yannis Vichos

The Cargo of Pottery

The importance of the cargo of pottery from the seabed off Point Iria is much greater than its limited quantity might suggest. It is one of the very few pottery assemblages that have so far been recovered from the wreck of a Late Bronze Age merchant ship in the Mediterranean. It contains 25 complete, fully restored or partly preserved pots, in addition to one which was located earlier but is now unfortunately lost. These pots seem to have formed the main bulk of the cargo of pottery, but probably not the whole of it. The pottery comprises three main groups: 1. A Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA group of 8 vases, 2. A Late Minoan IIIB 2 Cretan group of 8 vases, and 3. A Late Helladic (Mycenaean) IIIB 2 group of 9 vases.
All three groups are characterised by the presence of large transport vessels. Prominent in the first group are stoutly made Cypriot pithoi which had various functions. The second is made up of coarse-ware stirrup jars of Cretan origin, known as a chlareus in the Linear B texts and intended primarily for storing and transporting olive oil. The third is dominated by 3 large two-handled jars of Helladic type. The handleless Cypriot pithos with an oval-conical body and the tall Aegean stirrup jar are established types with an international distribution during the late 14th and the 13th c. BC, whose appearance can be traced from Ugarit in Syria to Sicily and Sardinia.

It may be noted that the mixed character of the pottery from the Point Iria wreck is a feature of the pottery cargoes of nearly every ancient wreck (see A. J. Parker 1990, M. Y. Treister 1993, Lone Wriedt Sørensen 1997) and reflects the nature and ways of maritime trade in antiquity. This combination of Cypriot and Aegean types [17], including transport pots with a wide distribution, has clear parallels in the large group of pottery from the Ulu Burun wreck (ca. 1305 BC) and to some extent that from the Cape Gelidonya wreck (ca. 1200 BC) on the south coast of Turkey, one difference being the absence of Syro-Palestinian wares such as pointed-based Canaanite amphoras and small vessels of everyday use, whose circulation and importation into Argolida and Corinthia is attested by finds from five Late Mycenaean sites.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the cargo of pottery as a one-phase group has so far no parallel within the Aegean, the coexistence or synchronous circulation of Aegean, Cypriot and Syro-Palestinian wares, however, is not out of place at major 14th and 13th c. BC coastal sites like Tiryns, Kydonia (Chania), Poros near Herakeion and Kommos on the south coast of Crete. The composition of group of pottery from the Point Iria Wreck can thus be taken as confirming a typical circulation pattern of certain types of transport vessels and products as part of the commercial trade between Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean centres in ca. 1200 BC rather than as footnote to the particular cargo.

Some indications of the provenance of the ship and the "nationality" of its crew may be gained from the utilitarian wares (Cypriot jugs and Mycenaean deep bowls and cooking pots) and the incised "trade marks" on the handles of amphora A99, which are related to the Cypro-Minoan script. These facts, taken with the location of the wreck, point to the south coast of Argolida, where important centres of naval power are known from the Catalogue of the Ships in the Iliad (Book II, lines 559 ff), like Tiryns, Asine, Mases and Hermione (Magoula), as the probable base of the ship, or to the coast of Cyprus, where large naval centres flourished at Enkomi, Kition, the site at Hala SultanTekke, Palaipaphos and Maa-Palaiokastro (for their role, see A. Bernard Knapp 1997).

Yannos Lolos

The Three Groups of Pottery
Cypriot Pottery
This contains well known Late Cypriot II(C)/IIIA types. These include three handleless pithoi (Exhibit nos. 1-3) with relief decoration on the shoulder, parts of a fourth pithos (Exhibit nos. 4-5), a wide-based jug (Exhibit no.6)[19], fragments of another, smaller, jug of similar type (Exhibit no. 7) and a juglet with a trefoil mouth (Exhibit no. 8) [20]. Two of these types, the pithos and the juglet, are represented by examples from the Cypriot pottery from the Ulu Burun wreck. The type of Cypriot pithos [21] with a piriform, ovoid or ovoid-conical body, cylindrical neck and multiple relief bands on the body is a basic type in the repertoire of Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA pottery. Pithoi of this shape, with or without or without handles, often exceed one metre in height, and occur at various sites in Cyprus: Hala Sultan Tekke, Pyla-Kokkinokremos, Kalavassos-Agio, Myrtou-Pigades, Maa-Palaiokastro and others. Like the Syro-Palestinian Canaanite pointed-base amphora, the Cypriot pithos belonged to a class of durable transport vessels that travelled great distances across the Mediterranean in the late 14th and the 13th c. BC, from Ugarit and Cyprus to the region of Acragas in southern Sicily and Antigori in Sardinia, which gives an indication of the commercial ties and connections between the different countries. According to the evidence from the Ulu Burun wreck and from storerooms and other areas in Cypriot settlements, pithoi of this type were used for storing and transporting oil or fruit, and also as containers and "refrigerators".

P. Astrom

Cretan Pottery
The Cretan pottery from the Point Iria wreck consists exclusively of stirrup jars of the tall commercial type. They comprise an important group of 8 vessels (Exhibit nos. 9-16), similar in number to those of similar type from the Ulu Burun wreck. The are made of coarse clay, which according to Dr Peter Day, came from central Crete. All except one (Exhibit no. 10) lack the spout, and one example (Exhibit no. 14) [22] preserves a simple painted decoration of a double band on the body and a spIrial on the disk of the false spout.

This type of tall coarse stirrup jar used for storing and transporting olive oil (a basic product of the Mycenaean export trade) [23] is known from numerous examples, many of them painted, from Palaio Kadmeio at Thebes, the Oil Merchants’s House and the Wine Merchant’s House at Mycenae, from Tiryns, Midea, Orchomenos, Pylos, Kydonia (Hania) and other Aegean sites. It is interesting to note that both the name of the jar (chlareus) and its ideogram appear in texts in the Mycenaean Linear B script at Knossos and Pylos. These stirrup jars had a remarkable distribution throughout the Mediterranean in the 14th and 13th c. BC, covering the whole of the active Mycenaean trading world from the Syrian coast and Cyprus in the east to Canatello in southern Sicily, the island of Filicudi north of Sicily and Antigori in Sardinia in the west.

Helladic/Mycenaean Pottery
The largest of the pots in this group are three plain, two-handled,jars of traditional Helladic type (Exhibit nos. 17-19), having close parallels in plain Late Mycenaean jars from major centres in the Peloponnese: Prosymna (Argolida) and Nestor’s Palace at Ano Englianos in western Messenia [24].
One of the bowls ((Exhibit no. 20) [25, 26] belongs to a common Mycenaean type, but the two incised marks (symbols) on the handles are of interest since they are the only examples of “writing” on a pot or object from the wreck cargo. They are probably connected with the Cypro-Minoan 1 Script and seem to have belonged to a special Cypriot system of marking pots dictated by the needs and conditions of trade and barter at the time. They are paralleled by incised marks on Late Mycenaean pots at Minet-el-Beida, the port for Ugarit in Syria, and on Cypriot copper ingots from the cargo of the Ulu Burun wreck. They are merchants’ rather than potters’ marks.
Examples of fine Mycenaean ware from the Iria Wreck include an almost complete spouted deep-bowl krater (Exhibit no. 21) [27], which has exact parallels at Tiryns. Athens and Mistros on Euboea, as well as two fragments of deep bowls of the usual Mycenaean type (Exhibit nos. 22-23) [29], one of which preserves traces of painted decoration.. The bowls and two cooking pots (Exhibit nos. 24-25) [28, 31]could well have belonged to members of the ship’s crew.

Yannos Lolos

Stone Anchors and Other Finds
Three stone anchors of different but characteristic types were recovered from the main concentration of the cargo and the surrounding area:
- A triangular slab anchor (Exhibit. No. 26) with rounded corners and three holes: one at the top for the mooring rope and two at the bottom for the wooden teeth. It weighs 25 kg and is made of friable conglomerate rock; it was chiefly for use on sandy bottoms.
- An irregular trapezoidal anchor (Exhibit. No. 31) with one hole at the angular apex. It weighs 43 kg and is made of a gray-green rock (pyroxenite), which is hard but flakes easily; it was chiefly for use on rocky bottoms.
- A triangular anchor (Exhibit. No. 32) with three tubular holes: one at the top for the mooring rope and two at the bottom for wooden teeth. It weights 35 kg, is made of a dark, dense rock, probably igneous, and was used mainly on sandy bottoms.
In spite of differences in type and material, the three anchors share certain features: they have an almost triangular or trapezoidal shape and were made from slabs of rock, which would have prevented them from standing upright on the bottom. Their relatively light weight shows that they were intended to be handled by one man and also that one of them by itself could not have held a seagoing vessel securely. They cannot be dated accurately, because such anchors were in use from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Nor do the kinds of rock help in identifying their provenance, since they occur equally in Cyprus, Crete and on the Greek mainland. The presence on the site of many finds of earlier, contemporary and later periods than the wreck makes it even harder to safely associate the anchors with the Point Iria ship. Only one of the three can with probability be connected with the wreck, for it was found in the main concentration of the cargo.

A very careful search and excavation failed to locate any metal objects. A lead ring, which originally had a perforated projection to take a light line, cannot be connected with the wreck, because it has exact parallels from Classical wrecks, for example the one at Porticello in Sicily dated 415-385 BC. It would have been part of the ship’s equipment and was perhaps used for freeing anchors or fishing gear snagged on the bottom.

Unfortunately nothing has survived of the ship itself. A few small fragments of wood may have come from the hull. The largest preserves a semicircular hole, perhaps for a wooden trunnel. Some other organic remains, probably remnants of rope, lost their original shape when they were brought up. Numbers of round stones (Exhibit. No. 27) of different sizes, weights and kinds were found on the excavation site and perhaps formed part of the ship’s ballast.

Christos Agouridis

The Nautical Dimension of the Wreck

The Last Voyage
If we cannot be sure of the final destination of the Point Iria ship, the starting point of its voyage must surely have been a site on the south or west coast of Cyprus. This is indicated by the comparatively large as well as important quantity of Cypriot pottery it was carrying. It is equally probable that one of its subsequent ports of call was in Crete. Although it might appear at first sight that the shortest passage from Cyprus to Crete would have been the direct one, it is more likely that the ship at first took a northwesterly course along the south coast of Turkey and then headed southwest, passing between Rhodes and Karpathos. The prevailing currents and winds in the eastern Mediterranean, combined with the seagoing capabilities of the ships at that time, made such a route almost a necessity.
On its arrival at Crete, it would have loaded the other large part of its cargo, the eight stirrup jars, which were probably full of olive oil.
It is harder to determine the last part of the voyage. The most likely scenario is that after waiting for a favourable wind to make the northerly passage to the Greek mainland, it set a course for Kythera, rounded Cape Malea and sailed up the southeast coast of the Peloponnese before traversing the Argolic Gulf, and foundered at its entrance. During the last leg of the voyage it may have put in at some of the many Mycenaean harbours along the way in order to unload part of its cargo and take on some of the Mycenaean wares which formed the third large section of its cargo at the time it went down.

Such a voyage by a seagoing vessel engaged in international commerce and at the same time serving the needs of a local trading network accords with the facts as we know them at this period. In any case, the finds recovered from the Point Iria wreck did not necessarily constitute the whole of the cargo transported by the ship on its last voyage. The different goods in the cargo might have changed in every harbour it called at, new ones being added and others being exchanged. This would partly explain the lack of finds one would expect to find in the wreck of a ship of this period sailing out of Cyprus, such as copper ingots, tin and other raw materials, as well as probable objects of Syro-Palestinian origin, of the sort that have been found on numbers of Mycenaean sites in Argolida and in the two other known contemporary wrecks. The above is the most probable scenario for the final voyage of the Iria ship, but not the only one. Others could be suggested, for instance that the Cypriot and Cretan wares were not taken on board at their places of origin, but were transshipped at sites in Argolida as part of the local commercial trade. However that may be, the importance of the wreck lies in the nature of its cargo and the fact that at the end of the 13th c. BC a ship which foundered in Mycenaean Argolida was carrying a mixed cargo of Cypriot, Cretan and Helladic origin. This now provides concrete evidence of the existence and nature of the maritime trade between Cyprus and Argolida at this period.

Causes of the Shipwreck
The Iria ship must have been wrecked by the sudden onset of bad weather, which drove it onto the rocky shore before it was able to weather Point Iria. This may be deduced from the fact that the wreck lies some 15 metres from the shore and that the cargo was scattered at random on the seabed. Our own personal experience during the four months we worked on the wreck, in the course of which we experienced heavy seas and high winds that twice snapped the cables holding our floating platform, as well as the information supplied by local fishermen, confirmed that the locality of the wreck is a dangerous hazard for shipping, especially for vessels approaching from the west. The crew and captain may have drowned or survived, if they were able to swim the few metres to the rocky shore. In the latter event, they might also have been able to rescue some of the more valuable small objects they had with them, like seal stones, jewellery, amulets, daggers, etc. This would explain the absence of such finds in the wreck.

Type of Ship
The two basic types of vessel that predominated throughout antiquity, which were the product of function and methods of sailing, had already appeared by this period. These were the long warship and the round-hulled merchantman. The Iria ship undoubtedly belonged to the latter class. As regards the particular morphological features of the merchantmen, the existing evidence, chiefly iconographic, shows that although there were different types, the general central type and its variations had a symmetrical hull.

According to the archaeological evidence and to ancient literary sources, it appears that by the end of the 14th c. BC the principal building method was the shell-first technique, whose basic features are known from later Greek and Roman wrecks. In this method the planking of the vessel was first fitted together, joined by mortises and tenons fastened with trunnels, and the frames and other members of the skeleton were inserted afterwards. Although the wooden hull of the Iria ship did not survive, one of the small wood fragments recovered had a worked semicircular hole in it, which would be consistent with a shell-first construction. The little evidence we possess obliges us to resort to speculation and to imagine a small vessel, no more than nine metres long, built by the shell-first method, and having a rudimentary keel and sparsely spaced frames, if any at all. It would not have been decked over, but the stem and stern may well have been covered and it may have had bulwarks. It was probably propelled chiefly by a square sail, with oars only being used as auxiliaries. It would have been steered by one or two steering oars mounted on the stern.

The Provenance of the Ship
The available evidence for the Iria ship, as for the other two prehistoric wrecks in the eastern Mediterranean, is insufficient to determine their "nationality"—if indeed the term is not anachronistic in this context. It might have been built in one place with timber imported from another and by shipwrights of different origin. The captain, the crew and the merchant may all have come from different lands. Although the Cypriot, Mycenaean and Creto-Mycenaean pottery in the cargo point to different provenances, and the few utilitarian wares (Cypriot jugs and Mycenaean deep bowls and cooking pots) suggest a Mycenaean or Cypriot origin for the ship and crew, we still cannot know where it was actually built or whether the crew were Mycenaean, Cypriot or both. Be that as it may, it is safe to say that the Iria wreck provides evidence of commercial relations between Argolida and Cyprus at the end of the 13th c. BC. Such trading transactions must have been frequent and regular, since by its nature it is unlikely that the cargo was a special shipment commissioned by some central authority. It represented, rather, an ordinary everyday kind of traffic. Crete would have been an intermediate stopping place on the Argolida-Cyprus route, less because its geographical position made it necessary for seagoing ships to take that route, than for reasons of trade and barter, in view of the close relations between what was by then Mycenaean Crete and Argolida, and because of the time-honoured links between Cyprus and Crete, which were very close in this period.

Yannis Vichos

extracts from catalogue of the Bronze Age Iria Wreck exhibition exhibited in the Spetses Museum. Apo ten enalia Kypro ston mycho toy polydipsioy Argous. To nauagio tou Akroteriou Irion Institouto Enalion Archaiologikon Ereunon. Athena. 1998. Now out of print. Reproduced from postings to AegeaNet by kind permission of Dr William Phelps.

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